And you thought you were done seeing angsty vampires on your screen for a while.
With the “Twilight” phenomenon looming in the not-too-distant past and unrealistically sexy bloodsuckers dealing with weekly drama on shows such as “Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood,” it seems like you can barely change the channel without seeing some hunky pale dude with pointy teeth longingly staring at you. The popular genre that started off as slightly dangerous and alluring has turned into something of a laughable stereotype. You know what I’m talking about: the perils of living forever, the complications of falling in love with a human, the otherworldly beauty, the incessant need for human blood, the part-creepy, part-mysterious stoicism. It’s overdone. We’ve seen it again and again.
But just when we thought we had a bit of a reprieve, independent film director Jim Jarmusch takes another stab at it. And honestly — hear me out — I wouldn’t knock it ‘til you try it. I first saw the trailer for “Only Lovers Left Alive” in theaters last month and remember incredulously thinking “Vampires? Really?” only because the film looked so good otherwise. The trailer had the dark, edgy tone and dry humor of an offbeat indie movie, and I wondered why Jarmusch would ruin such potential with a clichéd vampire storyline.
However, the film really is quite good. Bleak, eerie, and downright unsettling at times, but nevertheless surprisingly well done. “Only Lovers Left Alive” tells the story of two 21st century vampires: Adam (Tom Hiddleston), a reclusive independent musician living in Detroit, and his doting wife Eve (Tilda Swinton), hailing from Tangier to come love and comfort her brooding husband. The film casts vampires in an entirely new light. Stripped of the dramatic love triangles and teenage angst that we’ve become so accustomed to seeing, this movie simply provides a commentary on what the life of a vampire would be like in this day and age. While watching this, I was reminded that Vampires are pretty interesting by themselves without all the window dressings of exaggerated story lines. Viewers get a glimpse into the lives of a pair of impossibly old lovers, and the toll that their situation takes on their sanity.
Adam and Eve live a life that is a fascinating blend of the ancient and modern, completely isolated from the human world. They sleep all day and roam the city at night. They wear 17th century dressing gowns as they FaceTime over iPhones. They reminisce about the Plague and the Crusades as if they were only a few years ago. They occasionally frequent underground nightclubs, always hidden behind dark sunglasses, long overcoats and gloves. Living forever and relying solely on human blood for nourishment comes with its own set of problems, as well. Adam has set up a deal with a doctor at the local hospital in order to get “the really good stuff” (type O-negative blood, which they sometimes freeze into popsicles.) The two also deal with the turmoil of commitment to one person for all of eternity, and exactly what it means to love and share your life with them completely. And lastly, Adam especially laments the tragedy of being an immortal artist and the fact that his kind cannot share their gifts with the world personally, but rather secretly put their content out there and never take the credit. (One of the couple’s closest friends is Christopher Marlowe, the writer some believe to have actually penned the works of William Shakespeare.)
Jarmusch’s film reminds audiences what initially made us infatuated with these undead creatures in the first place. He removes vampires from their recent role as sparkly pretty-boys and brings them back to their roots. We are sucked in by Adam and Eve’s regality, their danger and sensuality, their ancient wisdom and the ultimate tragedy of their existence. Jarmusch proves that no topic or genre of film is too overdone or outdated as long as there are new ideas and fresh ways of looking at things.